Tim Cook's First TV Interview As Apple CEO (VIDEO)

What does Apple CEO Tim Cook, boss of the world's most valuable company and successor to the venerable Steve Jobs, have in common with NBC News anchor Brian Williams? On the surface, not a whole lot. But to hear Williams tell it, they're basically the same guy.

During the 20-minute interview, Williams cannot help but make several comparisons between himself and Cook. "It sounded to me that you and I grew up with the same American life, kind of grindingly simple and normal American middle class household — when you and I as kids would go to a neighbor’s house and see, under their new TV, Sony Trinitron, that would tell us something instantly," Williams said at one point.

Later, Williams pointed out that Cook looked more like an average guy than the demigod Jobs was to some Apple fans: "[Steve Jobs] was all black turtleneck and the glass frames and mystical and mysterious, and — you know, forgive me, you and I could work at a Best Buy. We’re, you know, plain-looking people."

Joking aside, the interview's high point came as the two discussed Apple's manufacturing partnerships overseas. Cook told Williams that Apple plans to make a line of existing Mac computers in the United States next year. In a Bloomberg Businessweek interview that hit the web on Thursday morning and became available in print on Friday, Cook also said that the company will invest $100 million to follow through with manufacturing partnerships in the U.S. in 2013. He did not, in either interview, specify which line of Macs would move stateside.

Apple's problem of allegedly poor working conditions at its suppliers' factories in China had been known for some time, but this year Cook actually stepped up and did something about it. After the <em>New York Times</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?_r=1" target="_hplink">published an expose</a> on the human cost of manufacturing an iPad, Cook went to China to visit manufacturing sites. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?_r=1" target="_hplink">Steve Jobs reportedly never set foot in a Chinese factory</a>.
More substantially than a PR stunt, Cook also <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/apple-foxconn-fair-labor-association_n_1273915.html" target="_hplink">asked</a> the D.C.-based Fair Labor Association to independently audit Foxconn's and other's component manufacturing facilities. Investigators found that laborers often worked <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/29/foxconn-apple-factories-labor-violations_n_1389392.html" target="_hplink">more than 60 hours per week</a> in March. Since then, Apple reportedly <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/21/apple-foxconn-audit_n_1819701.html?utm_hp_ref=technology" target="_hplink">sketched out a timeline</a> for having workers work sane schedules.